At the Gates Foundation this woman learned "the due diligence of grants and grant writing. The government side of philanthropy. The political side. The grassroots side. She learn about tax and legal implications and the policy intricacies of policy ... ". Thrilling.

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The Matchmaker
Craille Maguire Gillies
June 27, 2009
By Marcello Di Cintio

Michele Fugiel Gartner, self-described “philanthropy junkie,” didn’t truly understand that there was a world outside of her hometown until the Russian letters started to arrive. She was in the eighth grade, in Chicago, and had written to a school magazine looking for a pen pal. Her query was translated and published in a similar publication in Russia. The responses filled her mailbox – she received more than 300 letters – and opened her up to hundreds of different lives, most similar to her own. “That was a big marker for me,” Gartner says. The letters showed her that “there is something else out there.” The experience sparked an interest in intercultural dialogue that has led her around the world and, now, to Calgary.

Gartner and I meet over coffee not far from her digs at Social Venture Partners Calgary (SVP), where she is executive director. A private philanthropy firm that matches individual donors with local non-profits, it is a member of the global association SVP International. Beyond telling me the story of her post-Soviet pen pals, it’s difficult to get Gartner to talk about herself. Her impulse is to talk, instead, about the “sector,” about policies, about the “we” of her colleagues at SVP. In anyone else, this tendency to stay on message would suggest stiffness or even evasion. But she laughs so easily and so often, I realize talking policy is what brings Gartner joy. She is not merely promoting the non-profit sector, she is revealing what fills her heart.

Gartner studied communications at Arizona State University and, after graduation, studied English for two years in, of all places, Japan. She returned to academia with a focus on Asia and made her way to the East-West Center in Hawaii, then to the School of Orient and African Studies at the University of London, where she studied public diplomacy. Eventually, Gartner joined the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle. This was her first foray into the world of large-scale, multifaceted private philanthropy.

At the Gates Foundation, Gartner quickly learned that philanthropy was about more than just a Robin Hood transfer of dollars from the rich to the poor. She learned the difference between giving and “giving well.” She learned the due diligence of grants and grant writing. The government side of philanthropy. The political side. The grassroots side. She learn about tax and legal implications and the policy intricacies of policy that would bore most people into numbness. Philanthropy is “really layered,” she says. “That’s why I am so captivated.”

After rounding her way from Chicago to Arizona, Japan to Hawaii, and London to Seattle, Gartner arrived in Calgary last year with her husband, Craig, a Canadian-born banker she met in Seattle. While she navigates the world of local philanthropy – SVP has invested more than $1.5 million in local “investees,” as they call the organizations they fund – Craig is educating her in the finer points of Canadian culture. Her father-in-law, meanwhile, gives her books about hockey. (Gartner has already joined the Flames faithful, itself an act of charity.) But it is a northern brand of philanthropy that most intrigues her. In the United States, the struggle is to get government to support non-profits. In Canada, the government is by far the biggest investor of the sector. The challenge for Canadian non-profits, then, is to attract private donors, those people and businesses that can make an impassioned and personal commitment to a cause – not to mention bringing in serious dollars.

SVP adheres to a model of “engaged philanthropy,” which is shorthand for the active role that donors play. This is far from writing a cheque and filing away the receipt for a charitable tax write-off; donors, called partners, contribute $5,000 to a pool of funding and non-profits apply to SVP for financial support. The money is used to build capacity – behind-the-curtain structures – rather than fund projects. For example, Brown Bagging for Calgary Kids was one of the SVP’s recent investees. Instead of paying for juice boxes and sliced meat, it worked with the Brown Bagging board to develop a new marketing plan, a message to attract more attention, and more contributions, from the local community.

The partners who invest through SVP are involved in the entire process, and this is the thrust of engaged giving. Instead of making blind donations and waiting for their tax receipts, investors meet help non-profits operate like for-profit businesses. “This idea that non-profits are run different than businesses is a little skewed,” Gartner says, “because behind the scenes we are doing the same thing.” After all, successful companies and non-profits share the same structures: both require policies, governance, financial checks, HR and IT. Both require an infrastructure that is not immediately apparent from the shopfront, whether you are selling cars or running a soup kitchen.

The model suits Gartner’s social nature, and it has helped SVP weather the economic storm. People still want to give, regardless of the economic climate, but they want to be sure that their donations are used wisely. By being involved with the investees as volunteers – on the planning boards and in the offices – SVP’s donors know that their generosity is not being squandered.

A few days after Gartner and I first meet, I am at a wine boutique-turn-art-gallery where SVP is presenting $110,000 in funding to three local non-profits. Gartner is at the front of the room addressing the crowd without notes, thanking partners for their support and celebrating the work of the investees. Watching her, it occurs to me that, at 31 years old, she shatters the clichéd image of a philanthropist. She is hardly the sort of graying giver you might see photographed handing out oversized cheques at charity balls. “Philanthropy comes from the Greek for ‘to love people’” Gartner tells the collected givers and receivers at the reception. Then she helps hand out T-shirts with the words ‘To Love People’ silk-screened across the front.

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